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Finance Bill

I did, although he chose to relinquish his post. However, it reflects well on our party that we have managed to find another person of equal talent—some would say even greater, but that is for other Members to conclude. I am confident that at the next general election, when the leader of the Liberal Democrats, assisted by my right hon. and learned Friend and others, puts his case to the electorate, the voters of this country will not be impressed by a Labour Government who have left more than 5 million people on low and low to middle incomes worse off. The Prime Minister is now in a state of absolute denial about the effect of his changes. According to reports that I hear second hand—I am happy to take interventions from Labour MPs on this—he is telling the parliamentary Labour party that nobody will lose as a result of the changes made in his final Budget when we know, and as has been confirmed this afternoon by the Chairman of the Select Committee on Treasury, the right hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (John McFall), that more than 5 million people will lose as a result of the changes announced in 2007. No wonder Lord Desai, a distinguished economic commentator on the Labour Benches in the House of Lords, said:"““Gordon Brown was put on earth to remind people how good Tony Blair was””." We have a complete disintegration of discipline in the Labour party. We have the Prime Minister, waiting in an ante-room in the west wing of the White House for his audience with the most powerful politician in the world, having to divert his attention to emergency phone calls to a Treasury Parliamentary Private Secretary—not a PPS from another Department, but a PPS from the relevant Department—so that he could plead with her, ““Before I have an audience with George W. Bush about issues of global magnitude, please, please will you not embarrass me by resigning as PPS to the Chief Secretary?”” It is a pitiful state of affairs. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith) was not the only rebellious PPS—we have a full-scale revolt: the hon. Members for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt), for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson), for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis), for Hove (Ms Barlow), for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) and for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound), and, no doubt, many others, whose unfavourable comments I have yet to read in the newspapers. The Chancellor used his Budget to tell us that he would crack down on carrier bags; the Labour Chief Whip is now having to crack down on the bag carriers. It is an extraordinary state of affairs that it has taken Labour MPs so long to realise the consequences of doubling the 10p rate. That proposal was not only in last year's Budget, which took place on 21 March 2007, because only a month ago, on 18 March 2008, during the Divisions in the House on the Budget resolutions, we yet again had a vote on the 10p rate. The Government's position was carried with the support of precisely those Labour MPs who are now making such a fuss, because, as I understand it, they had not then had the opportunity to talk to their constituents and they had not canvassed for the local elections. [Interruption.] As is being said from a sedentary position, it is amazing what an opinion poll or two will do to refocus minds and allow people to rediscover their consciences.